(IJACSA) International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, Vol. 8, No. 8, 2017 Text Steganography using Extensions Kashida based on the Moon and Sun Letters Concept Anes.A.Shaker, Farida Ridzuan, Sakinah Ali Pitchay Faculty of Science and Technology Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia Nilai, Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia Abstract—Existing steganography methods are still lacking in the steganography, carrier files can be termed as cover text, terms of capacity. Hence, a new steganography method for cover images, cover audio, cover video or cover network [2]. Arabic text is proposed. The method hides secret information bits The main drawback for all the methods is their low capacity within Arabic letters using two features, which are the moon and wherein only a small amount of bits are allowed to be hidden. sun letters and the redundant Arabic extension character “-” The lower the capacity of a method the bigger the carrier file known as Kashida. The Arabic alphabet contains 28 letters, must be to hide the secret message. Hence, a new method is which are classified into 14 sun letters and 14 moon letters. This proposed which use the concept of moon and sun letters with classification is based on the way these letters affect the extension Kashida. Both the sun letters and moon letters are at The Arabic .[3] (ال) at the beginning of the beginning of a word preceded by (ال) pronunciation of the definite article words. This method uses the sun letters with one extension to language comes in two groups with each group consisting of hold the secret bits „01‟, the sun letters with two extensions to hold the secret bits „10‟, the moon letters with one extension to 14 letters. hold the secret bits „00‟ and the moon letters with two extensions The objectives of this paper are: 1) to present a proposed to hold the secret bits „11‟. The capacity performance of the work using the concept of moon and sun letters with extension proposed method is then compared to three popular text Kashida, and 2) to present an evaluation study of the proposed steganographic methods. Capacity is measured based on two work compared to three existing methods. The rest of this factors which are Embedding Ratio (ER) and The Efficiency paper is organized as follows: related works are presented in Ratio (TER). The results show that the Letter Points and Section II followed by an explanation of the proposed work in Extensions Method produces 24.91% and 21.56% as the average embedding ratio and the average efficiency ratio Section III. Section IV explains how the evaluation was carried correspondingly. For the Two Extensions „Kashida‟ Character out. Section V presents the results and a discussion of the Method, the results for the average embedding ratio and the results. Finally, the conclusion and future research suggestions efficiency ratio are 56.76% and 41.81%. For the Text Using are presented in Section VI. Kashida Variation Algorithm method, the average embedding ratio and the average efficiency ratio are 31.61% and 27.82% II. RELATED WORKS respectively. Meanwhile, the average embedding ratio and the For the past few years, a lot of research has focused on the efficiency ratio for the Proposed Method are 61.16% and development and potential applications of Arabic script 55.70%. Hence, it is concluded that the Proposed Method steganography. outweighs the other three methods in terms of their embedding ratio and efficiency ratio which leads to the conclusion that the A. Steganography Using Multiple Diacritics Proposed Method could provide higher capacity than the other An entire message can be hidden in a single diacritic mark methods. by generating a number of extra-diacritic keystrokes equal to the binary number representing the message. For this scenario, Keywords—Text steganography; Arabic text; extension consider this example of (110001)b as a secret message, the Kashida; capacity first diacritic is repeated 3 extra times (3 = (11)b); the second I. INTRODUCTION one, 0 extra times (0 = (00)b); and the third one, 1 extra time (1=(01)b) [4]. Steganography can be described as the concealment of confidential messages implanted within other apparently B. Word Spelling Method regular messages, graphics or sounds [1]. Steganography is The author presents a new text steganography method for defined as the study of these invisible communications. hiding data in English texts. This method is based on Steganography deals with ways of hiding the existence of the substituting US and UK spellings of words. In English some communicated data in such a way that it remains confidential words have different spelling in US and UK. For example [2]. It maintains secrecy between two communicating parties. “program” has a different spelling, in UK (program), and US In text steganography, secrecy is achieved by embedding data (program). By using this feature, the author proposes his into cover text and generating a stego-text. There are different method for hiding data in an English text. In this method, the types of steganography techniques and each has its own data is hidden in the text by substituting such words [5]. strengths and weaknesses. According to the medium used for 286 | P a g e www.ijacsa.thesai.org (IJACSA) International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, Vol. 8, No. 8, 2017 C. Vertical Displacement of the Points I. Using Letter Points and Extensions method This method makes use of dotted letters. Some language This process takes advantage of the fact that more than half texts, which include Arabic and Persian, come with a the text letters in the Arabic language come with dots. While substantial number of dotted letters. The Arabic text has 26 these dotted letters were loaded with the confidential bit “one”, characters, of which 13 have dotted letters, while the Persian the letters without dots were loaded with the confidential bit text has 32 characters, of which, 22 have dotted letters. With “zero”. As the confidential information needs to conform to the this method, „1‟ is encoded to move up the point, or else „0‟ is cover-text letters, not every letter is loaded with confidential encoded. This process is replicated for the following dotted bits. Other than the letters used to indicate the particular letters characters in the text as well as the following bits of containing the confidential bits, redundant Arabic extension information [6]. characters are also included in the system. The advantage that comes with letter extensions is the fact that their utilization D. Mixed-case Font does not affect the writing content in any way [12]. The concept for this method was formed during an Internet search for popular fonts used for chatting and presentations. J. Two-extension „Kashida‟ Character The author came across an innovative kind of font that can type This paper presents a novel steganography method useful capital and small letters in sequence. For instance, if one typed for Arabic and other similar languages. This method benefits in Arabic ”ـ“ ,the word „software‟, this word would appear as „SoFtWaRe‟. from the feature of having the Kashida character Sometimes the size of the letters would differ, and at other script. An extension character is inserted after a letter in the times they would be of similar size. The authors developed an cover object if the secret bit is „zero‟. Instead, if the secret bit is innovative text steganography technique for the transmission of „one”, two consecutive extension characters will be inserted confidential information using this newly-discovered font [7]. [13]. E. Move the Diacritic Up K. Enhanced Kashida The Arabic language comes with diacritics. The inclusion The author utilized the Kashida by encoding the original of these diacritics in most Arabic texts is usually non- text document with Kashida according to a specific key which obligatory and this study emphasized the employment of this was produced before the encoding process. Kashida are {ذ _ د_ؤ _و_أ _ا} characteristic. The vertical shifting of the diacritic is in inserted before a specific list of characters accordance to the character. „Zero‟ denotes no change, and until the end of the key is reached where the kashida is inserted „one‟ denotes the increased distance between the letter and its for a bit 1 and omitted for a bit 0. This process is repeated until diacritics [8]. the end of the document is reached in a round robin fashion [14]. F. Using “La” Word This method is proposed based on the feature code using L. Text Using Kashida Variation Algorithm (KVA) the “La” word. This word is obtained by connecting “Lam” and Most of the previous methods apply the same procedure for “Alef” letters into a single word. The hiding process is based the whole text which may allow steganalysis to study the text on the existence of two forms of this word which are the format, hence, to breaking the code or, in other words, find the which has a unique code and the hidden message. However, this study proposed a method to (”ﻻ “) ”special form “La .by inserting Arabic extension apply four scenarios randomly to improve data privacy (”لـا“) ”normal form “La character between the “Lam” and “Alef” letters. The normal form “La” is used to hide bit zero while bit one is hidden using The method presents four scenarios. The first scenario is by the special word [9]. adding Kashida after pointed letters to be encoded as one, otherwise, it is encoded as zero. The second scenario is by G. Improved „La‟ word adding Kashida after nonpointed letters to be encoded as one, The authors proposed an enhanced method for the otherwise, it is encoded as zero.